


With Respect to Dies Natalis

by Civillian



Category: The Knick (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-26 19:06:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5016694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Civillian/pseuds/Civillian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Twenty-six is far too young of an age to merit exhaustion,</em><br/>Or, Dr. Bertie Chickering is a good man, but he's also human―and he's all too aware of the flaws involved.</p><p>Inspired by the birthday gift scene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day One

**Author's Note:**

> Because I am not surprised by Bertie's flip in behaviour at the start of season 2. Heck, humans are complicated, wherever they happen to be on heroin or not.
> 
> (And Dr. Chickering's sudden passive-aggressive sulking is, quite frankly, amusing and has to be written about,)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of the aftermath.

 

**8976**

Understandably, Bertie Chickering does not remember his first birthday, but Father most certainly does.

Partly because of the sentimental value such an occasion holds, and partly because an hour and a half into dinner, Dr. Chickering has resolved to  _never_ participate in feeding his son birthday cake again.

Twenty-five years later, Bertie still protests to eating anything even remotely vanilla flavoured.

(Just without the collateral damage involved.)

 

 

* * *

  **Day One**

  
The first days for any beginning resident are terrifying enough. Bertie still vividly remembers them. He'll never be able to forget, quite frankly, the way he stumbled and panicked, the way he frantically tried to answer every question Dr. Thackery―or, God forbid, Dr. Christiansen―had asked. Questions directed at him or otherwise, meant for him, or otherwise. That kind of nerve wrecking discomfort does not wear off for weeks.

Bertie had been relieved, first and foremost, when he could put in his hours working without that familiar pang of panic in his stomach. When he could do something without clenching his fists or faltering. When he wouldn't delay, but actively pursue any given request.

He had happily become accustomed to being able to do things without _worrying_ so darn much.

So when he feels that tense discomfort again, over a year and a half later, he doesn't entirely know what to do about it. Only that he's positive that he'd quite like to be rid of the feeling altogether.

At least he's not the only one, in that respect.

It's been three days since Dr. Thackery's... leave of absence, and nobody at the Knick is entirely sure what to do about anything, anymore.

Father had warned him of this. Frequently, throughout that very morning before he set off to work, and the evening beforehand, when Bertie had finally dragged himself back from Cromartie Hospital with Dr. Zinberg's blood type papers securely under his arm. Warned him, especially considering the Knick's prior circumstances, that everything would be chaotic.

"If there is ever a good time to take your leave," he had stressed. "It will be now."

And that's that. No arguing, no persistent complaining. Father had said what he had wanted to say and just...

Slip away in the midst of the confusion. Bertie will not lie, he can see the appeal.

He sees an awful lot more of everything from his current position.

And it's this sudden grasp of social perception that starts causing him―and everyone else―problems. Problems that are not entirely great, but significant nonetheless.

Ask around the Knick about a Dr. Bertram Chickering Jr, and people will say that said Dr. Chickering doesn't quite get  _angry_. It's not one of his more prominent features. Instead, he's sensitive. Gentle. Considerating. _A good man._  

But when Bertie steps into the Knick that morning, he's not. When Nurse Pell asks him, however innocently, if Dr. Thackery is okay, he's not. If anything, he's irritated at being asked, and it's not often that Bertie gets irritated at anything.

Irritated, and full-blown infuriated.

"I don't  _know_." Bertie snaps, gloved fingers clenching so forcefully that the leather creaks loud enough to surprise them both. Or, perhaps, it's the look he was giving her at the time that did the surprising. Either way, the look on Pell's face is shocked to say the least and because Bertie is, in all accounts, horrified by his response under his scowling exterior, it's him who retreats first.

He spends the better part of his first day back in his office, avoiding everyone, throwing himself into his research and ignoring Thackery's brand of scotch that someone had, at some point, decided to relocate into his space.

It will not be the last time. 

Either the scotch or, _well_...


	2. Day Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which changes are most certainly noticed.

**8977**

His second birthday again goes unremembered.

But Bertie is a sentimental man. It was his first birthday in New York, in his new home, so it's got to count for something special.

 

* * *

  **Day Two**

It takes Bertie twenty-three minutes and forty-seven seconds into his second day to realise that the Knick has changed, and not necessarily for the better. 

At first it all goes reasonably well for his standards. Three minutes to push his way through morning regards and get to his office, shed his coat, and collect any necessary equipment. By that point, he's ten minutes into his usual routine. Five minutes more to go and grab a cup of coffee, and two and a half minutes to drink the whole thing. After that, it's another five to find out what it was he ought to be doing today. Easy. That's fantastic. 

For Bertie, who struggles to get up most mornings and do anything even remotely productive without being pumped up on caffeine beforehand, that is not too bad.

Then he realises, first with shock, then melancholy understanding, that the ledger has yet to be put up and Thackery isn't in his office to give any immediate insight.

At that point, Bertie is not entirely sure what to do.

Or what to even think.

It's a wave of confusion and frustration, and something that feels far too close to anger for his own comfort. It leaves him standing there, staring at the empty space on the noticeboard thinking nothing along the lines of anything intelligible.

It's not like when he first started, when he just plain did not know what to do in his new surroundings, in his new job. He knows what it is he needs to be doing―his usual routine is still in mind, constantly. It's just the particulars. The little things. Nobody else seems to know, either, and it's his fist instinct to go and find the first person who would, and...

That person isn't there. 

Thackery isn't there.

 _Thackery_ , is in Cromartie Hospital after―

Setting his hands at his sides, Bertie pushes that thought to the back of his mind and rather than getting himself into _that_ emotional turmoil again, pursues the more logical of solutions. He goes to find Dr. Edwards.

Fifteen minutes later, he's informed by Barrow that, no, Edwards is not in either. It was Bertie, some other doctors not on his team, and some fellow by the name of Hatterway that Bertie has never heard of before, let alone met.

"Why?" Bertie gripes, unnecessarily. "Is he sick?"

"Not that I am aware, he just hasn't come in yet." Barrow tilts his chin up slightly, with that ever present entitled pride, and Bertie is left feeling for the first time in what seems like months, unpredictably alone. "Have you checked with the other nurses? Surely they have some idea of what today has in store."

Barrow is only trying to be helpful, Bertie knows―or, at least, thinks. It's hard to tell with people like the Superintendant―but instead of acting in any way courteously like what is expected, he just mutters some form of farewell, and stalks his way to the men's ward instead, frustrated to the point of not being able to form coherent sentences, which is actually just exhausting. He's vaguely aware of Barrow's eyes on his back, but by the time he's managed to turn the corner, and his hands are safely in his pockets and curled into tight stressful fists, Bertie doesn't care. The disgust at his behaviour has been replaced by the simple, glaring fact that that he'll be the only doctor on the men's ward today. 

He'll deal with it.

Forty-five minutes into that very intention, Bertie is quite aware that he _can't_ deal with it.

Dr. Thackery's combination of focus, aggressiveness and inventiveness is what made him extraordinary at his job. He thinks hard about his patients, he pushes them, and he does not hesitate to improvise. The men's ward is filled with twenty-two people, three of them are scheduled to have surgery at some point, and there's also a few incidents on the female and children's ward that Bertie may or may not depending on the workload may have to intervene in as well. If Thackery was here, Bertie knows, this would have been easy. 

But he's not Thackery. Bertie is not aggressive, and right now, he sure as heck isn't all that focused, either.

"Dr. Chickering, can you look at these charts―"

"―Mr. Martins woke up last night with―"

"―I need a consult on the patient with the hernia, Doctor."

He struggles up to the point where he's trying to smile and stress the importance of proper bandaging procedures at the same time, desperately trying not to scream himself hoarse, thirty-three minutes (and fourteen seconds) into his usual lunch break, desperate for some sort of substance, the chance to _breathe_ , in the face of his usually well-regimented routine being ripped unceremoniously apart. He struggles, well up to the point that he turns around sharply to make his way down the other side of the room and he sees _her_.

She looks about as bad as Bertie feels, but instead of saying anything, anything at all, to Lucy Elkins, Bertie leaves the room to go and examine a young Polish woman who may or may not have meningitis, instead. 

Bertie knows she deserves it, but there's something heavy in his chest that feels like regret.

 

 

 


	3. Day Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A familiar face, and procedure, returns.

**8978**

His third birthday, he imagines, was presumably unremarkable. Either because Bertie himself couldn't imagine it, or because what he remembers from his mother's retelling certainly made it sound that way. Regardless of the reason, it was probably the truth.

The outcome of said birthday, however, he remembers. Not the details itself, but the habits gained afterward, most certainly. It's important. He practices this important routine sometimes four, to five, to ten times a day depending on his current workload―it is quite impossible for it to be forgotten.

Bertram Chickering Sr, if he hadn't had practiced as a doctor, would have likely been labeled as obsessive. Indeed, Father had a thing when it came to hygiene, and he made it clear, once Bertie was old enough to feed himself―

(The term "feed himself" is actually ambiguous. It should probably be "Feed himself _properly_ ", by all accounts, for Bertie has always eaten agreeably, but the first few years made family dining impossible with his track record of picking up individual parts of his dinner, sometimes eating them, but just as often dropping them on the floor.

And then, of course, there was the "finale", after he had eaten or transferred all of his dinner, where he'd pick up his plate with both hands and throw it on the floor.)

―that no son of _his_ was going to spend much longer without being able to wash his hands properly. 

Hands are a big part of being a physician. Hands check temperatures and inspect wounds and apply stitches and use tools to, generally, cut people open. A surgeon needs his hands. Eyes too, but hands are arguably more important.

Because hands also transfer diseases.

So it is a good thing, Bertie reasons, that Father got him on the trend early. 

... Even if it was earlier than conventional. 

 

* * *

  **Day Five**

Edwards returns on the fifth day, bruised and acting strangely, but Bertie is that relieved to be faced with a familiar colleague that the realisation doesn't quite hit him the way it should. 

He's sympathetic, of course; the man looks to be in an immense amount of pain, but Bertie is used to being rebuffed. Doctors are the ones supposed to be doing the healing, after all. No good doctor needs to be treated himself.

Ordinarily, this would have been the high-point of his week, being able to take a step back from acting on all fronts and finally resume into some normalcy, but by the end of his shift it all falls sharply into the worst.

Bertie usually leaves work by six, but with being understaffed comes excessive workloads, and neither he nor Edwards were seemingly ready to give up anytime soon. Bertie because he doesn't want to go home, Edwards because he doesn't want to stop working. It leaves Bertie feeling fortunate, this because it's the same sort devotion that Thackery had shown, and it's familiar, but at the same time it also makes him profoundly uncomfortable because― _understandably_ Edwards says―Bertie doesn't know how much of it was actually Thackery. That kind of suspicion feels like it will never leave, and he hates it. He misses the time when he hadn't had to second guess.

Sometimes he wishes that he was more aware of everything at the time. Perhaps the downfall wouldn't have been so hard.

(But he's also the only one stood here, relatively unscathed, still standing. So perhaps there is merit in ignorance―regardless if he has been raised against the concept or not.)

But Dr. Edwards, at least, is legitimate. He's real and physical and in the midst of a flood of uncertainty, Bertie appreciates the focus he brings. 

They're still working an hour and a half past Bertie's usual, when in the thirty-ninth hour of her labor, it was decided that Elizabeth Rourke would have to undergo surgery to deliver the baby. 

And here is where everything goes to Hell, in Bertie's opinion.

And it's here where the trend of drinking Thackery's scotch becomes more than just a toast to the late Dr. Christansen. 

Bertie doesn't like performing surgeries on pregnant women. Five failed attempts, a night of―as he has since learned here, _drug-fueled_ ―experimentation and a successful-if-absolutely-nerve-wrecking operation was enough to firmly put him against it for life. He hates it. Doesn't want to do it. He'd rather, honestly, perform another hernia repair if it meant getting out of it.

But Edwards has only read the unfinished paper. He hasn't performed Thackery's repair like Bertie had, physically, with on hand experience. So when Dr. Edwards offered Mrs. Rourke the operation, and she refused, Bertie was well into gearing up the confidence for when she eventually said yes.

("We're Gods," he remembers Thackery saying, once. It was one of those lectures that Bertie remembered perfectly. "They always say yes. It's the nature of reverence."

Wasn't that the truth?)

All surgeons have ways, Bertie has come to understand, of de-stressing themselves. Everett smoked, for instance, though he rarely became nervous enough to warrant the need in the first place. His professor back at Colombia actually drank. One of his former college friends, Bertie recalls vaguely, tied and untied a line of rope. Anything to keep his hands and mind busy. Bertie first learned how he best prepares close to a year ago.

A combination of basketball and good old projective geometry, interestingly enough.

He spends the time it takes for Mrs. Rourke to give up on trying to push her little baby out and for Edward's to convince her into surgery in his office, bouncing _that_ basketball up against the top of the cabinet standing perpendicular to his desk, catching the rebound bodily and sending it off again, sat slouched. He's just calculated that he can actually send it off of the cabinet, against the roof and a few inches away from his feet when he is told, by Nurse Elkins, that there had been no progress with the patient―that they would have to operate. 

"The baby's head is no lower and still sideways; her cervix hasn't dilated any further." Lucy explains, and Bertie presses the basketball against his chest and grips it, hard.

He doesn't make eye contact. He's not sure he even can, anymore.

"Very well, Nurse." And with that he's up and walking out, rolling the basketball off of his palm behind him.

Prep-Gown, sink. Water. Hands. Soap. For five minutes. 90 percent ethanol. Aseptic liquid. Another scrubbing. Bowls. Acidic solution, carbolic acid, potassium permanganate solution. All sterilized. Hands thrown up over the elbow, he passes through the door to see the swollen stomach, pale under the sterile light and looks towards Edwards.

"Ready?"

No, but Bertie's always been the optimistic one. So he smiles anyway.

Interestingly enough, though he'll never admit it unless pressed, Bertie can dance. His mother made sure of that. Mastering the full repertoire was incredibly important to her. So, being the renaissance kind of woman, she had decided long ago that all of her children would know how. Father, once she told him so, agreed whole-heartedly. This instant agreement had nothing to do with the fact that they were on their honeymoon and he was too caught up in his new wife to deny anything she might propose. Nothing at all. Bertie was taught up until he was nine, respectively. After that, school and fencing and, yes, baseball became more important. 

(Far, far more important, as his MVP status will tell anyone.)

Learning to perform surgeries is kind of like learning to dance. Difficult, very difficult, but with practice it's easier. With practice, it's less frightening and more fun.

Bertie wouldn't call this surgery in particular fun, but he's well practiced. 

"Knife."

"Sponge."

"Scalpel."

"Sponge."

"Scalpel."

And so forth and so on. After the surgery, Bertie is finally able to breathe properly. To look up from stitching, to hear the frustrated wails of the infant and to finally, thank God, scrub out and give himself time to calm down. The soft amber colour belied the harsh taste, but it's enough. 

It's like dancing: an incredible amount of effort goes into making it look effortless.

 

 

 


	4. Day Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More changes are made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I called it! I called it! I called it! I called it! Ep. 2 was brilliant, as is to be expected, but I totally called it and now I can continue on~

**1980**

Dr. Chickering's workday custom remained identical on the weekdays; he left for work early―well before Bertram awoke―arrived home just before dinner, and spent the remainder of his evening split between his family and his office. Weekends varied. Seldom was the doctor needed, but if he was, such was unavoidable. He knows better than to put matters to chance. Even after 1868, when Dr. Bellamy was put to use, along with the midwife, Dr. Chickering was only semi-confident that nothing could go horrifically wrong in the space of a morning without his prior knowledge.

It never hurt to be careful.

Of course, the extended family had a lot to say about Dr. Chickering's workplace habits, not many of it positive. The general consensus was in spending less time at his practice, Dr. Chickering should unarguably spend more time at home.

In truth, however, the reality was nothing of the sort; Dr. Chickering loved his son, yes, but that did not necessarily mean he had much to do with him. The way he saw it, he was ensuring that Bertram had the best possible future. That, on top of disciplinary and the occasional social matter, was the most significant of his investments.

He knows that Bertram will not understand, especially not at this age―not ever, if Anne had her way, that he is breaking his back trying to be successful enough to give him the opportunities that he, as a boy, could have only dreamt of. 

The conversation came up again recently, when Anne had asked wherever or not Bertram would likely prefer one present or another. Dr. Chickering was relatively unconcerned in the matter. He didn't really care. Nor did he really know. Bertram was relatively well-decided for his age, and perhaps more importantly, in a position were his demands could be met. Surely, in a logical scenario, it did not matter.

"He could have anything he could possibly want." 

He had said to her, his wife, two days before the boy's fifth birthday. In his office because it's where he's most often found. 

Anne examines her husband for a short, sharp moment. "You can't resent him for that."

"I don't _resent_ him," he replies, honestly. "I just don't understand him."

And he doesn't.

Bertram has had a very different upbringing to that of his father. His education has been planned thoroughly and is wholly acceptable, he remains always clothed―never in hand-me-downs, and he is given anything his heart desires. He's fed. He's warm. He's healthy. And while the family was never terribly poor, they were in a far better state than when Dr. Chickering was a boy, that is most certain. Most of this progress is his own doing. His own hard work.

So when he's faced with Bertram, who doesn't have to try―and, possibly, may never need to―he doesn't know quite what to think. Or how to respond.

(Only that, never, will his son take it easy. His grandparents were lazy. His great-grandparents were lazy. Never again will there be a repeat of such a stage. He wants his son to _do_ something.

Call him arrogant, but he knows his son could do something, something excellent. One day.)

At five-years-old, now, Bertram amused Dr. Chickering often enough with his docile good humor, but the elder Chickering's interest was varied at best. Providing his son wasn't breaking things, or―God forbid―himself, the elder Chickering had little to do with him, as was considered natural until the boy got older. 

Everything else was the nurse's concern. Or, perhaps, Anne. 

The boy's fifth birthday had landed on a Saturday this year, however. So Dr. Chickring was there to face the commotion as soon as it arose.

At first it wasn't obvious to identify the exact problem, partially because Dr. Chickering doesn't understand young children, and partially because, as a general principle, Bertram wasn't exactly the most fretful of children in the first place. Screaming wasn't commonplace. The boy rarely cried, even as an infant and, for the most part, he had managed to remain largely undemanding and cheerful.

But the boy still had his moments; all children do. He wines, he protests. They're just rare enough in occurrence for his parents to be surprised by them.

So when the boy comes running into his office, unproperly dressed and in the middle of hysterics, Dr. Chickering is indeed surprised. 

He's surprised enough to physically startle, ripping his morning paper three-quarters down the middle, effectively ruining the read for good.

However, in the end, the most surprised of them all must be Anne, for when she walks into Dr. Chickering's office half an hour later with the pretext of getting Bertram ready for the day's events, she does so to find her husband explaining, patiently―with the aid of a book on Dental Anatomy―to their son that, yes, it's okay for your central incisors to fall out and, no, Bertram won't have that hole there forever. The whole image is completed with the premature look of intense concentration on the boy's face, the uncanny semi-understanding that is becoming less imaginary and more authentic the older he gets.[  
](https://www.google.co.uk/aclk?sa=l&ai=CD4cxBcwqVqiNF4bDywOi2LeoB-mDsqMH6eSU2tgBsZXah_kDCAQQAygFYMkGoAHN--n9A8gBB6oEJk_QRy1aUZ0mj2Y02SOV2zlQ0TGX3Mg98k3TS93yfekrEUMg1VGLwAUFoAYmgAebhJYCiAcBkAcCqAemvhvYBwHgEoaKltKQhZP0wwE&sig=AOD64_0FHvnr9qhD0i7WgCrJKnaoPvWRjQ&ctype=5&clui=5&q=&ved=0CDEQvhdqFQoTCNLF8Lzo2cgCFQSicgodBvUP_A&adurl=http://www.lww.com/product/9781608317462%3Fpromocode%3DWD03LCZZ)

And, then:

"Are you _sure_ it's supposed to come out, Daddy?"

Bertram Chickering Jr lives in a world where, with a father like his, nothing bad is supposed to happen.

(Honestly, this childhood disillusion will last for far longer than either of his parents will realise.)

So the boy still doesn't quite trust the concept of something _supposing_ to fall out of you. Especially when said somethings are supposed to be well cared for by washing out and flossing regularly. The concept is at best, contradictory.

Dr. Chickering rubs at the bridge of his nose, and sighs. "Yes."

"And I'll get new ones?" Bertram asks.

"Yes."

A thoughtful look.

"And a third?"

Dr. Chickering frowns. 

Without any pause for emphasis, Bertram Chickering Jr. adds, almost conversationally, "Grandma has third teeth. I saw her." A pause, and then, an expression of revulsion. "She took the big ones out!"

Glancing up once at his wife, Dr. Chickering offers a satisfied half shrug.

"Molars, Bertram. Those would be molars."

 

* * *

  **Day Nine**

He wasn't having a very good morning.

Most regrettably, it was becoming something of a recurring theme. It starts off with Bertie waking up at half eight instead of his usual six-twenty, with the gradual understanding that after hitting his alarm clock the day before, he'd actually broken it for good. So he was late. He skips breakfast because he doesn't want to be any worse behind than he currently is, and with no substance and no coffee, by the time he manages to get to the Knick, he's grouchy. 

Granted, his level of grumpy wouldn't concern many people on a normal day, but his behaviour as of late has been drawing attention. People notice change, and the Knick is not the only thing evolving. They all are.

Bertie hates it, he does, but he's also got a lot to do and a lot to think about in turn, so the thought remains passive.

They're understaffed, performing jobs with two people when, ideally, there ought to be four—and, now, with a whole new system to boot.

On the men's ward, Bertie grabs the chart of a nearby bronchitis patient and physically recoils at the sight of it. 

For a moment, he wonders if something is wrong, if somehow the wrong page managed to get on the wrong clipboard, but the longer he stands there and gawks at it, the more it begins to make sense. It is the patient's clipboard, yes, it's just different. Very different.

The patient glances up again and asks, weakly. "Is there something wrong?"

"No, no." Bertie sets his mouth into a grim line and plants the chart back on the bed frame above. "Not at all. Just... just a change in management..."

And it continues on like so; the charts are different, on every patient and, as Edward's explains, so it can be more easily understood. He catches Bertie by the elbow during a lull in the morning's work and explains it through; why it was set out, for what reasons—there are also no snarky or offhand comments, just purposeful interpretation. A teaching method Bertie is no longer used to, but not entirely opposed. By the end, Edwards is clearly elated. Bertie asks why.

"From previous experience, not many people in this hospital tolerate change."

He's hinting at the wider issue, Bertie feels, but he doesn't let on. He _doesn't_ like change, he never has, but Edwards was a good doctor, and this change wasn't so bad. He could come to like it.

He'd rather just leave it at that.

Because Bertie doesn't like politics. The longer he can stay out of it, the better.

"It is a reliable system," he offers, instead. "Just takes some willing."

"How enthusiastic of you, Dr. Chickering." Edwards draws some amusement from their situation, but not much. He's thankful, even if he doesn't say it. Bertie can't help but feel a little frustrated at this, all of this. Edwards is brilliant. He shouldn't have to ask for Bertie's cooperation. He's done nothing but impress, as far as he is concerned.

Bertie offers a wry smile, but his reply is more or less authentic. "I do try."

Although interestingly enough, when it's just the two of them working, Bertie doesn't have to as often. Try, that is. Granted he enjoyed work with Thackery and Gallinger before... oh, God, what a horrible day that had turned out to be, but it wasn't like he'd had some time to pull himself back together before he was thrown back into the game. He was still hurt, God, he was still hurt, but Edwards was very good at creating a sense of purpose, and that purpose was something that Bertie realised he desperately needed. A chance for him to just... perform. It was a short term opium that did the trick. 

So when Edwards suggests more patients being prepped, more people to operate on, Bertie doesn't argue. If anything he encourages it. It means he can keep on keeping his head down and keep on keeping busy. There was plenty to be doing, and he liked that. He liked having a worthwhile distraction.

And they're helping more people. Easily one of the best things to happen all week.

But then it all comes back. One moment everything looks to improving and it's ground to a halt at the whims of someone upstairs. Bertie knows he should have been expecting it, but still, when Edwards hung a little too close that afternoon and warned him, Bertie, that they wanted to see anyone even remotely involved in the "Thackery Incident" in the board room, he can't help but feel profoundly uncomfortable again. 

A, _here we go again_ vibe. One that he'd rather not experience.

Captain Robertson does not know Bertie personally—Cornelia does, to some degree, but by this point Bertie has lost any and all hope of seeing her again—he only knows that with a name like Chickering, and at the age of a mere twenty-five, Bertie couldn't possibly have had much to do with it. That was the overall consensus held by everybody, it seemed. Dr. Bertie Chickering had little to do with what happened; he was only there to pick up the pieces when it got too late.

And, even then, it was Father who finally prevailed when a push came to a shove. Bertie was there only in afterthought. 

(How fitting.)

He doesn't know if that is what they generally all believed, or if they were just trying to protect his career or what, but he can't help but agree. 

He really had no idea.

Robertson did not look up from the table. His voice was cool and even. "Investors don't take kindly to being corrected, son. Nothing I could have said would have made a diff—"

They both looked up as Nurse Elkins opened the door. "Dr. Edwards gave me your message?" 

"Yeah. Have a seat, miss."

Bertie put on his poker face as Lucy sat down.

"With the new hospital well into planning, we will be acquiring some new investors," said Roberston, and Bertie grimaced internally. He knows little to nothing about business. Only that he really should learn. "My guess is that they will be here by the end of the week. Which means we have until tomorrow afternoon—all of us involved—to figure out a way to present the... incident without putting more financial burden and stigma onto the Knick as it is."

"How would this change anything?" Bertie frowns, feeling more confident than he probably should. "And I won't lie, for the good of the hospital or not. It shouldn't be undervalued."

Lucy looks at him with that, with some kind of aghast, sickened expression he remembers her giving him back when he threatened to walk away, and Robertson does as well. Only his expression is more cautious than disgusted.

"He killed a child," Bertie adds, feigning nonchalance. As if anyone could forget that. Inside, he's seething. 

"Nobody’s asking anyone to lie, son." Bertie is starting to wish he'd stop calling him that. Robertson rubbed at his eyes, "I'm talking about just presenting the truth in the best possible way."

He flashed a look that seemed to say _please, leave it_ , and sinceBertie is used to that look from men like Robertson, he does. "Understandable," He grumbles, adequately compliant. 

"I'm glad to hear it."

By the time it's all said and done, Bertie still has his job, so he assumes everything went well enough. 

The rest of the day was grueling. He stayed at his desk and did his best to concentrate. The headache that festered after his meeting with Robertson intensified at some point past five; Codeine helped there—he'd never be touching cocaine again for as long as he can help it.

As for the other pain he was feeling... well, codeine wouldn't be helping that. Alcohol might, but only for a while.

Bertie isn't stupid enough to mix the two, though. He'll just have to push through.

... Maybe it was time to stop kidding himself. 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The incident with the tooth falling out is actually based on a real experience. My dad was a pediatrician while we were growing up, and when my little brother was four, he knocked out one of his baby teeth while playing outside. Suffice to say, he was horrified--the concept of something falling out when your dad is practically the embodiment of the health service in your world has to be quite terrifying. I certainly remember times being convinced that nothing would ever go wrong with a parent for a doctor. 
> 
> It gives me an excuse to *try* to get into the head of Chickering Sr, anyway.


End file.
